Organization 101

Even if I’m only in the first year of my program, I already learned a lot about my future profession. The thing that I’m sure I’ll never forget is that teachers need to be organized in almost every aspect of their life. I know I’ll need to be organized because I like it when everything is clear in my head and I’m convinced that students can definitely tell if teachers are well-prepared or not.

This is why when I read about Planboard, I thought it was one of the best ideas I had seen and that it would be my one of my favorite tools for the years to come. The description from the Planboard team also helped to convince me to use it.

Basically, Planboard is a free online tool to help teachers organize their school year. It allows you to plan your activities for each period of the day. You can choose your own school calendar and it will automatically repeat the periods you create. It is totally user friendly and there are not a lot of things on the page so you don’t need to be worried about being disturbed by ads or numerous functions all over the page. Here is what it looks like.

What I like about it is that I could plan my whole semester or school year with it and I could keep it for the years after. I could also modify it as I go and see the progression of the students’ learning. The other good thing about it is that there is an enormous amount of lesson plans available that were created by other teachers who use Planboard so I could look at them to get inspired.

Another of its main advantages is that it is directly on the internet so I can have access to it from wherever I might be. I wouldn’t need to carry my agenda and erase in it each time my plans change or if I make a mistake. It’s also easier to keep if I want to use it in for the following years than keeping an agenda from each year.

As Herbert Lui expressed in his blog, this tool is a goldmine for substitute teacher. Indeed, teachers could post their schedule on this tool so that their substitute teacher could have access to their whole lesson plan! They could even print it out and tell them what they had time to do, etc. In addition to sharing it with the substitute teacher, the teacher could also share it with students who missed class so they would know what the rest of the class saw and what they have to do for next class.

I think the creators of this tool really had the needs of the teachers in mind when they created it. On this note (I know it’s not really related to the tool itself but I’m sure you’ll like it anyways), the Planboard team created a movement for teachers and I thought I’d share it with you because I personally really enjoyed going over some of the stuff you can find here.

Hope this will help you find the motivation you need to fulfill your duty! 😉